Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Review of The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

My kind of book, Sigrid Nunez writes fondly of dogs, more critically of writing and writers (Rilke, Kundera, etc.), but mainly about grief. Told in the first person by a writing teacher after the death of a colleague and friend, it is poignant, absorbing and smart. She ends up with aged 185-pound Great Dane in her tiny, rent-controlled "no-dogs-allowed" rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan where she's lived for decades. She is unable to write. She is barely able to teach and she keeps getting threatening notices from the apartment management about the canine occupant who she grows to love. A book to savor and ponder on death, on faith, on animals and on love.